How to check proxy fraud scores

Fraud score is the single most useful number for judging a proxy before you buy at volume — and it is the one most providers hope you will not check.

What a fraud score is

Reputation services keep a history of every IP address: spam, chargebacks, bot traffic, whether it looks like a datacentre, a VPN or a home connection. They compress that into a score, usually 0 to 100, where lower is better.

Sites buy access to these databases and use the score as one input when deciding whether to trust a visitor. It is not the only signal, but it is a cheap one, so almost everyone uses it.

The two worth checking

Scamalytics — free, no account needed. Paste an IP and it gives a risk score plus whether the IP is flagged as a proxy, VPN or Tor node.

IPQualityScore — free tier with a daily limit. More detailed: a fraud score, plus separate flags for proxy, VPN, bot activity and recent abuse.

Check both. They use different data, and an IP clean on one is occasionally flagged on the other.

How to read the result

0 to 25 — clean. What you want. Looks like an ordinary residential connection.

25 to 50 — usable but watch it. Some history, or a subnet with mixed reputation. Fine for many sites, marginal on strict ones.

50 to 75 — compromised. Real abuse history. Expect verification prompts and soft blocks.

75 plus — do not buy. Already burned. It will fail on anything that checks.

Also look at the flags, not just the number. An IP scoring 20 but flagged "proxy: yes" is worse than a 35 with no flags — the flag is a direct statement, the score is an estimate.

What good looks like for ISP proxies

A genuine ISP proxy on a fresh subnet should score under 25 with no proxy or VPN flag, and the ASN should name a consumer carrier — AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast — not a hosting company.

If an ISP proxy is flagged as a proxy, the subnet has been abused enough to be catalogued. That happens to cheap, heavily resold ranges. It is the single clearest reason not to buy on price alone.

How to test before buying

1. Ask for one IP. A provider unwilling to sell a small quantity, or give you a test address, is avoiding this exact check.

2. Check the IP itself, not the marketing. Scamalytics and IPQualityScore, both.

3. Check more than one. Proxies come in subnets. One clean IP does not mean the batch is clean — ask for two or three from different parts of the range.

4. Look up the ASN. It should be a consumer ISP. If it resolves to a hosting provider, it is a datacentre proxy being sold as something else.

5. Re-check occasionally. Reputation changes. An IP clean at purchase can be flagged weeks later if a neighbour on the subnet abuses it.

What the score does not tell you

Speed. A pristine IP on a slow connection still loses drops.

Whether it works on your target. A site can block a subnet regardless of its public reputation score. Only loading the actual site tells you that.

Behaviour. No score compensates for a bot that fills forms instantly or twenty accounts checking out in the same second.

Treat the fraud score as a filter, not a guarantee. It reliably tells you what to avoid. It cannot promise what will work.

Try it on ours

We would rather you checked than took our word for it. Buy the minimum, run the IPs through both services, and load your actual target site through them before scaling up.

If the numbers do not hold up, do not buy more — from us or anyone.